Football: City can cope with striker injuries, says Pellegrini

LONDON - Manuel Pellegrini has challenged his Manchester City players to ignore the absence of their star strikers as the champions aim to increase the pressure on Premier League leaders Chelsea.

With Jose Mourinho's Chelsea not in action until Monday when they travel to Stoke, second placed City can draw level on points with their title rivals by beating Crystal Palace at Eastlands on Saturday.

But City's hopes of an important pre-Christmas victory have been hampered by a rash of injuries to forwards Sergio Aguero, Edin Dzeko and Steven Jovetic, as well as defender and captain Vincent Kompany.

All four will miss the Palace clash, but Pellegrini is hopeful midfielders Samir Nasri, David Silva and James Milner can fill the goal-scoring void in the short term.

"The strikers, the three of them are out for Saturday. We will try to play in another way," Pellegrini said.

On Sunday, Liverpool will hope to draw inspiration from memories of last season's thrilling 5-1 demolition of Arsenal when the teams resume hostilities at Anfield.

Arsene Wenger's side were routed on their last trip to Liverpool's famous stadium in February, when a devastating four-goal salvo inside the first 20 minutes left the north London club reeling.

It was the start of an 11-game winning run that took Liverpool to within sight of the title.

Their subsequent collapse has been followed by a wretched start to the current campaign, with last weekend's chastening 3-0 defeat at Manchester United leaving them 18 points behind Chelsea in 11th place.

But having emerged from a taxing trip to Championship leaders Bournemouth in the League Cup with a 3-1 quarter-final victory in midweek, manager Brendan Rodgers is hopeful that his side have turned a corner.

"Slowly we are getting there. I've said that my teams have shown at Liverpool that we get better and better," Rodgers said.

"A lot of players are adapting. I've been looking to find ways and solutions to make us more creative as we haven't been that at all this season and that is the mark of the team."

Arsenal lost 3-2 at Stoke City in their last domestic away game, but have since produced back-to-back 4-1 wins over Galatasaray in the Champions League and Newcastle United in the league.

The home victory over Newcastle left Wenger's side in sixth place in the table, five points clear of Liverpool and two points shy of the Champions League places.

United on the march

Manchester United will be looking to record a seventh consecutive victory when they travel to Aston Villa.

Last Sunday's victory over Liverpool enabled Louis van Gaal's team to remain eight points behind Chelsea and five behind City, prompting captain Wayne Rooney to declare that they still have designs on the title.

Villa saw a five-game unbeaten run come to an end in a 1-0 loss at West Bromwich Albion last weekend and have a dismal home record against United, who they have not beaten in the league at Villa Park since August 1995.

Fourth-place West Ham, beaten only once in their last 10 matches, host bottom club Leicester, who are now five points from safety.

Leicester have not won since stunning Manchester United 5-3 in September, but West Ham manager Sam Allardyce says that Nigel Pearson's team are no pushovers.

"Leicester are a hard team to break down. They work very hard for each other," he told his pre-match media conference.

"Despite their run of games without a win, they haven't been turned over by anyone - it's only ever by the odd goal - so there are a lot of dangers in Nigel's teams that we need to be well aware of."